How can enterprises become more agile?

Agility is not just a buzzword, it encompasses the crucial transition from legacy paradigms to modern practices

24th July 2019

In order to keep up with an increasingly complex technological landscape, it is vital that enterprises become more agile. If companies can achieve high levels of agility, they can ultimately benefit from improved levels of efficiency and a better overall performance.

The need to become more agile

Due to advancements in emerging technologies, more companies are now beginning to adopt agile management practices. In effect, this entails transitioning from traditional methods in order to address new and more complex business challenges.

Agility permeates every aspect of the enterprise, from app development to customer engagement. In practice, it simply encompasses an enterprise’s ability to recognise important technological, social, or economic shifts and react accordingly.

Organisations that embrace agile practices are more likely to be successful in their endeavours. Indeed, 71% of organisations reportedly use agile methodologies for their project management tasks.

Adopting an agile mindset

Before transitioning from legacy technology or practices, companies must first and foremost adopt an agile mindset. Indeed, Arie van Bennekum, co-author of the Agile Manifesto, told EM360 that while some companies “learn how to do agile,” many are “not coached in changing their paradigms, their beliefs.”

Transitioning to an agile organisation thus requires employees to overcome their own individual paradigms. According to Bennekum, role modelling is essential to achieving this as “when the environment (and therefore management) does not change, paradigms stay the same, behaviour stays the same and agile will not be successful.”

Enterprises must alter their legacy habits, including hierarchy, management and bureaucracy. Then, it is possible to guide directly and allow people to learn, while ensuring that the new transition to agile is sustainable.

Implementing an agile business model

Above all, speed and flexibility are key to a company’s transition from the old to the new. In order to ensure an organisation’s success, Bennekum developed the Integrated Agile Transformation Model (IATM).

For Bennekum, an agile transformation is essentially a project or a program. Only “when the level of adaptability of an organisation has become high with an internal platform for continuous learning, continuous improvement and continuous innovation,” is the transformation is complete.

If companies can succeed in implementing an agile business model, the potential benefits are abundant. Although agile strategies have the power to improve business performance, however, companies still require robust tools in order to keep track of these fast-moving campaigns.